Upon relocating from Kansas to Genoa City, Adam embarked on a doomed relationship with Paul Williams’ attorney daughter that ushered in a period of great change. How great was it? Well, for starters, not only did he go from being played by Chris Engen to Michael Muhney, she went from being played by Vail Bloom to Eden Riegel. By the time their engagement was broken, they — wait for it — hardly recognized one another.
Eager to keep his suspicious lawyer from figuring out that he was behind the gaslighting of stepmother Ashley Abbott, Adam pretended that he was gay — and interested in more than legal counsel. A dirty trick, to be sure, but at least no one could say that the conniver didn’t go all in with his performance: Adam actually went so far as to hook up with Rafe to keep him from deducing that he was just another pawn in the game.
As if it wasn’t awkward enough that the blonde bombshell was the former wife of Adam’s half brother, Nick, she was also the grieving mother from whom he’d stolen a perfectly healthy baby girl to give to Ashley after causing her to miscarry. (Got all that?) Despite his monstrous misdeed, Adam fell deeply in love with Sharon — and vice versa, to the point that, even after the truth came out, she couldn’t entirely shake her feelings for him.
Adam might have met his match in his old college girlfriend, a scheme queen every bit as sneaky as he is. But he could never commit to her wholeheartedly, a fact made abundantly clear when he screwed her over in some business shenanigans that threatened to make her new address federal prison. Honestly, we seemed to like Skye more than Adam did, so we were bummed when, after dad Victor helped her fake her death, she wound up taking a fatal tumble into a volcano. Which, we’d imagine, most tumbles into volcanos would be.
When the con artist and Adam were both persona non grata in Genoa City — which, honestly, could have been any given year, as fond of stirring the pot as they both are — their commiseration turned into friendship and then into a romance that was surprisingly sweet, even inspiring. Of course, there would always be the little matter of his inability to completely and totally shut Sharon out of his life.
No sooner had the paralegal begun working at Newman Enterprises than she’d started working Adam, pursuing a relationship with him as a way of obtaining intel to feed his father, Victor. When Adam figured out what she was up to and tried to use her to turn the tables on Daddy, Victor fired the vixen — which only left her even more fired up. Enraged, she falsely accused Adam of rape, then skipped town to avoid being sent up the river.
After accidentally running down Billy Abbott and Chloe Mitchell’s daughter, Adam dodged jail time — as well as Delia’s vengeful parents — by playing dead and undergoing enough plastic surgery to turn him into a replica of Gabe Bingham (then Justin Hartley). To further sell the charade, he played along with a marriage of convenience with Gabe’s bride — as you can see, extremely convenient now and then. But Sage was drawn to Nick, and Adam himself couldn’t stay away from…
Yes, when Adam rose from the grave as Gabe, he wasn’t nearly as interested as usual in Sharon. Rather, he was all about Connor’s mom. After revealing to her why she was so attracted to Gabe, aside from the fact that he looked like Justin Hartley, Adam made plans to run away with his family and start over. “Not so fast,” said Chloe, who vindictively blew those plans — and, we thought, Adam — to smithereens.
Needless to say, Adam (now Mark Grossman) wasn’t dead, much less as dead as a doornail. And once he regained his memory, the amnesiac sought to pick up where he left off with his lost love and their son. Despite her reawakened feelings for old flame Nick, it looked like she and Adam just might make it the second — 22nd? — time around. Alas, looks can be deceiving, and in this case, were. He wound up being drawn like a moth to a flame back to…
She was building a new life with stand-up guy Rey Rosales when she got tangled up once again in Adam’s web. And while she did her best to fight her feelings, oh, c’mon, it was a losing battle if ever there was one. Besides, if she could get over Adam stealing baby Faith from her, she could certainly get over Rey. A “Shadam” reunion seemed to be as safe a bet as Victor coming out on top in any corporate face-off.
Against all odds, “Shadam” didn’t reunite. And “Chadam” didn’t stick together, either. So Adam found himself being alternately entertained, intrigued and infuriated by the new pot-stirrer in town — despite his insistence that there wasn’t and never would be anything going on between them. Mm-hmm. Just look at the way she’s looking at him here: That’s a “You’re kidding yourself” expression if ever we’ve seen one.
It seemed like only yesterday that Adam and Sally had first exchanged “I love yous” when into his lap dropped something for which he might have cared even more: the CEO position at Newman Enterprises. In no time, he’d removed his half sister’s portrait, popped the bubbly and “christened” the office with Sally. But given Daddy Dearest’s habit of rotating execs, did Adam really stand a chance of making this a “long-term relationship”?
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